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Introduction to Syriac: an Elementary Grammar with Readings From INTRODUCTION TO SYRIAC An Elementary Grammar with Readings from Syriac Literature Wheeler M. Thackston IBEX Publishers Bethesda, Maryland Introduction to Syriac An Elementary Grammar with Readings from Syriac Literature by Wheeler M. Thackston Copyright © 1999 Ibex Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or retransmitted in any manner whatsoever, except in the form of a review, without written permission from the publisher. Manufactured in the United States of America The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Services—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984 IBEX Publishers Post Office Box 30087 Bethesda, Maryland 20824 U.S.A. Telephone: 301-718-8188 Facsimile: 301-907-8707 www.ibexpub.com LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Thackston, W.M. (Wheeler Mcintosh), 1944- Introduction to Syriac : an elementary grammar with readings from Syriac literature / by W. M. Thackston. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-936347-98-8 1. Syriac language —Grammar. I. Title. PJ5423T53 1999 492'.382421~dc21 99-39576 CIP Contents PREFACE vii PRELIMINARY MATTERS I. The Sounds of Syriac: Consonants and Vowels x II. Begadkepat and the Schwa xii III. Syllabification xiv IV. Stress xv V. Vocalic Reduction and Prosthesis xv VI. The Syriac Alphabet xvii VII. Other Orthographic Devices xxi VIII. Alphabetic Numerals xxiii IX. Comparative Chart of Semitic Consonants xxiv X. Preliminary Exercise xxvi LESSON ONE 3 §1.1 The Emphatic State §1.2 Gender §1.3 The Perfect of the Simple Verb § 1.4 The Proclitics LESSON Two 9 §2.1 The Perfect: Full Inflection §2.2 Direct Objects LESSON THREE 14 §3.1 Pronominal Enclitics I §3.2 Predication of Existence m INTRODUCTION TO SYRIAC and the Expression of Possession §3.3 Relative Clauses LESSON FOUR 19 §4.1 Possessive Pronouns §4.2 Noun-Noun Possession §4.3 The Pronoun Koll §4.4 Pronominal Anticipation with Prepositions LESSON FIVE 24 §5.1 Noun Plurals: Emphatic State LESSON SIX 28 §6.1 Independent Pronouns §6.2 The Short Pronouns as Copulas §6.3 Demonstratives LESSON SEVEN 33 §7.1 Inflection of Ill-Weak Verbs §7.2 The Perfect of Hwd §7.3 The Perfect with Object Suffixes LESSON EIGHT 38 §8.1 The Active Participles §8.2 Uses of the Participle §8.3 Object Suffixes with the Third-Person Plural Verb LESSON NINE 44 §9.1 Adjectives §9.2 Pronominal Enclitics II §9.3 Posses• sive Suffixes with Plural Nouns §9.4 Paradigm of ya(h)b LESSON TEN 51 §10.1 Paradigm of l-y Verbs §10.2 Object Suffixes with the Remaining Persons (Perfect) §10.3 The Construct Sin• gular §10.4 The Construct Plural §10.5 Adjectives in the Construct State §10.6 Adverbs LESSON ELEVEN 57 §11.1 Paradigm of Hollow Verbs: Perfect §11.2 Paradigm of Geminate Verbs: Perfect §11.3 Paradigm of ll-alap Verbs: Perfect §11.4 The Pleonastic Dative IV CONTENTS LESSON TWELVE 62 §12.1 Passive Participles §12.2 Ill-Weak Verbs with Pronominal Objects §12.3 Aba, AM, and Hmd with Pronominal Possessives. LESSON THIRTEEN 68 §13.1 The Absolute State §13.2 Numbers §13.3 Ordinals. §13.4 The Infinitive: G-Verbs §13.5 Infinitives with Pronominal Objects LESSON FOURTEEN 77 §14.1 Imperfect and Imperative of G-Verbs: Sound Roots §14.2 Imperfect Inflection of I-n Verbs §14.3 Imperfect of l-alap Verbs §14.4 Imperfect of l-y Verbs §14.5 Imperfect of Ill-Weak Verbs § 14.6 Imperfect of Hollow Verbs § 14.7 Imperfect of Geminate Verbs §14.8 Imperfect of Il-dlap Verbs LESSON FIFTEEN 86 §15.1 Uses of the Imperfect §15.2 The Imperfect with Enclitic Objects §15.3 Suffix Pronouns with Ill-Weak Im• perfect §15.4 Imperatives with Suffix Pronouns §15.5 Im• peratives of III-Weak Roots with Suffix Pronouns §15.6 Nouns in -u and -i LESSON SIXTEEN 94 §16.1 The Pael Conjugation §16.2 Pael Conjugation: Vari• ous Verb Types LESSON SEVENTEEN 100 §17.1 The Aphel Conjugation 17.2 Aphel Conjugation: Various Verb Types LESSON EIGHTEEN 106 §18.1 Medio-passive Verbs: Ethpeel, Ethpaal & Ettaphal INTRODUCTION TO SYRIAC Conjugations §18.2 The Ethpeel Conjugation §18.3 Metathesis in Ethpeel §18.4 Ethpeel with Various Verb Types LESSON NINETEEN 113 § 19.1 The Ethpaal Conjugation § 19.2 Metathesis in Ethpaal § 19.3 Ill-Weak Verbs in Ethpaal LESSON TWENTY 119 §20.1 The Ettaphal Conjugation §20.2 Adjectives/Nouns in -and §20.3 Substantivation of Participles §20.4 Abstraction of Substantivized Participles §20.5 Other Verbal Forms APPENDIX A: Verbal Inflections 128 APPENDIX B: States of the Noun 142 APPENDIX C: Verbs with Enclitic Objects 144 READINGS From the P5/rfa 151 From Pseudo-Callisthenes' Legend of Alexander 154 The First Discovery of the True Cross 157 The Teaching of the Apostle Thaddeus 162 The Martyrdom of St. Barbara 169 From The Tale of Sindban the Wise 173 From The Cave of Treasures 179 From Kalilag and Demnag 181 From a Metrical Sermon by Ephraem Syrus 182 From The Syriac Book of Medicines 184 A Flood in Edessa 186 From the Chronicon Syriacum of Barhebraeus 188 SYRIAC-ENGLISH VOCABULARY 193 INDEX 227 VI Preface SYRIAC IS THE ARAMAIC DIALECT of Edessa, now Urfa in Eastern Turkey, an important center of early Christianity in Mesopotamia. Edessene Syriac was rapidly accepted as the literary language of all non-Greek eastern Christianity and was the primary vehicle for the Christianization of large parts of central and south-central Asia. Even after the rupture in the fifth century between the monophysitic Jacobite church of Syria and the Nestorian Church of the East, which coincided geographically with the Persian Empire, Syriac remained the liturgical and theological language of both these "national" churches. Today it is the classical tongue of the Nestori- ans and Chaldeans of Iran and Iraq and the liturgical language of the Jacobites of Eastern Anatolia and the Maronites of Greater Syria. As a result of the far-reaching missionary activity of Syriac speakers, the script of Mongolian even today is a version of the Syriac alpha• bet written vertically d la chinoise instead of horizontally. Syriac is also the language of the Church of St. Thomas on the Malabar Coast of India. Syriac belongs to the Levantine (northwest) group of the central branch of the West Semitic languages together with all other forms of Aramaic (Babylonian Aramaic, Imperial Aramaic, Palestinian Aramaic, Samaritan, Mandaean) and Canaanite (Ugaritic, Hebrew, and Phoenician). Also to the central branch belongs the North Arabian group, which comprises all forms of Arabic. Classical Ethiopic (Ge'ez) and many modern Ethiopian and South Arabian languages fall into the south branch of West Semitic. More distantly related are the East Semitic Akkadian (Assyrian and Babylonian) vu INTRODUCTION TO SYRIAC and Eblaite. Syriac literature flourished from the third century on and boasts of writers like Ephraem Syrus, Aphraates, Jacob of Sarug, John of Ephesus, Jacob of Edessa, and Barhebraeus. After the Arab con• quests and the advent of Islam in the seventh century to the area over which eastern Christianity held sway, Syriac became the language of a tolerated but disenfranchised and diminishing community and be• gan a long, slow decline both as a spoken tongue and as a literary medium in favor of the dominant Arabic. Although there are a few scattered pockets of Aramaic speakers left in remote areas of the Near East, there are no immediate descendants of Syriac spoken to• day. Of major importance is the role Syriac played as the intermediary through which Greek learning and thought passed to the Islamic world, for it was Syriac-speaking translators who first turned the corpus of late Hellenistic science and philosophy from Syriac into Arabic at the Dar al-Hikma in caliphal Baghdad. Syriac translations also preserve much Middle Iranian wisdom literature that has been lost in the original Persian. In this text the language is presented both in the Syriac script, as it will always be seen, and in transcription, which is given so that the pronunciation of individual words and the structure of the language as a whole may be represented as clearly as possible. As is the case with most Semitic languages, Syriac leaves so much of a word un• written that to read an unvocalized text requires a good deal of deci• pherment on the part of the reader. It is essential therefore for the learner to become accustomed as early as possible to recognizing words, along with all their potential readings, from the written con• sonantal skeleton. After the first few lessons, the majority of the sentences in the exercises—and all of the readings in later lessons—are taken directly from the PSittd, the standard Syriac translation of the Bible. It is rec• ognized on the one hand that most students learn Syriac as an ad• junct to biblical or theological studies and will be interested primarily vui PREFACE in this text; it is difficult, on the other hand, to overestimate the stylistic influence of the Bible on Syriac authors in general. Biblical passages also have the advantage of being familiar, to some degree or other, to most English-speaking students. Sections II and V of Preliminary Matters must be studied thor• oughly before proceeding to the grammar because an understanding of the principles of begadkepat and the schwa, as well as vocalic re• duction, is mandatory before any substantial grammatical explana• tions can be given. There is a preliminary exercise on p. xxvi; it should be xione after one has become familiar with the contents of section II of Preliminary Matters (pp.
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